U.K becomes the first country to approve the controversial ‘Three Parent baby'.

Courtesy: The Sun

TheHuman Fertilization and Embryology Authority (HFEA) announced on Thursday that it is ready to give licenses to clinics for the controversial ‘Three Parent ‘IVF procedures.

HFEA chair Sally Cheshire called it “historic and important" decision to license the treatment, naming it "a world first". She further added “Today’s historic decision means that parents at very high risk of having a child with a life-threatening mitochondrial disease may soon have the chance of a healthy, genetically-related child. This is life-changing for those families. We feel now is the right time to carefully introduce this new treatment in the limited circumstances recommended by the panel.”

courtesy: You Tube 

In response to lobbying by MuscularDystrophy UK, lawmakers voted in favor of this pioneering technique in February, 2015 allowing the use of  DNA from three people to prevent children being born with certain fatal genetic diseases.

The first child born with this technique is expected to take birth at the end of 2017.

The procedure has been developed by scientists at Newcastle University.

Advocates of the new procedure say around 2,500 women could benefit from mitochondrial donation in Britain, equating to around 150 births a year as one in 200 children born in the UK have some form of mitochondrial disorder.

Prof Doug Turnbull, Professor of Neurology and director of the Wellcome Centre for Mitochondrial Research Newcastle University plans to treat 25 carefully selected patients each year.

Mutations in mitochondrial DNA are maternally inherited and are responsible for causing many debilitating disorders without definitive treatment. Diseases of the mitochondria appear to cause the most damage to cells of the brain, heart, liver, skeletal muscles, kidney and the endocrine and respiratory systems. 

 

Image courtesy:The telegraph

Mitochondrial replacement therapy, has been shown to be a novel technology in minimizing mutated mtDNA transmission from oocytes to pre-implantation embryos.

In this technique, the nucleus of an affected woman's extracted egg is removed and is put into the enucleated egg of another woman, which contains her mitochondria. The child would thus be genetically related to three people, which is why the media often refers to "three-parent babies" or "three-parent in vitro fertilization."

 These techniques have been referred to with several terms, including "mitochondria replacement," "mitochondrial manipulation," "oocyte modification," "three-person embryos," "three-parent babies," and "nuclear genome transfer" (the most technically accurate).

The procedure can be carried out in one of the two ways.
1) maternal spindle transfer (MST).
2) pronuclear transfer (PNT).

2-ways of the three-parent in vitro fertilization

The simpler of the two is called maternal spindle transfer (MST). First, doctors use standard IVF treatment to collect eggs from the mother. They then remove the nucleus from one of the mother’s eggs and transfer it into a healthy donor egg that has had its own nucleus removed. The reconstituted egg holds all the mother’s healthy nuclear DNA, or 99.8% of her genes, plus the donor’s healthy mitochondria. This egg is then fertilised with the father’s sperm and the embryo is implanted into the woman like any other IVF embryo.

The second procedure is very similar. In pronuclear transfer (PNT), both mother and donor eggs are fertilised with the father’s sperm. Before the eggs have time to split into early-stage embryos, the chromosomes inside them are removed. Those from the donor egg are discarded, and replaced with the chromosomes from the mother’s egg. The resulting egg is fertilised and ready to grow into an embryo in the mother’s womb.

Robert Meadowcroft, CEO of Muscular Dystrophy UK, responds: “Today, this historic decision will open the door to the first licensed treatments being offered to eligible women affected by mitochondrial disease. 

Families have, understandably, had to wait through years of thorough ethical, safety and public reviews. We know of many women who have faced heartache and tragedy, and the sorrow of stillbirths, while trying to start their own family, and this decision gives them new hope and choice for the first time.”

However, many have opposed the approval of the 3-parent baby.  Christian bioethics campaigner James Mildred said: "This is a dangerous step in completely the wrong direction." Another critic commented that it brings us a step closer to designer babies.

SOURCES:

The mirror,UK

Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA)

The Guardian

British Fertility Society

Muscular Dystrophy UK